A friend of mine recommended Seraphina to me; she knew I love dragons. And I loved Seraphina.  I enjoyed Shadow Scale, but not as much as Seraphina.  Here’s why.

#bookaday Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman. #stickynotereviews And now, the war between dragons and humans that turns out to be more complicated that we thought! (What war isn’t?) Shadow Scale’s plot felt a little repetitive as Seraphina was off to find half dragons and found them without too much trouble. Ho hum. I really missed the music. However, as a reader sensitive to #lgbtq issues, I liked the way the trans character was treated – I think it’s easier to do within the scifi/fantasy space. I also loved the conversation between Seraphina and Abdo about gender. (There’d be more, but I ran out of space on my sticky. Check out the post on my blog. Link in my bio.)

A photo posted by Eli (@thebooksupplier) on Jul 5, 2015 at 2:04pm PDT

//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.jsThe trans character said that she misgendered herself at one point, then corrected the issue, which is why Seraphina had a challenging time finding her. Seraphina’s response was pretty much like, “Okay, cool.” I appreciate when characters don’t make a fuss about people’s gender identity. It is. Fantastic. Moving on. And then there was this exchange between Seraphina and Abdo, when Seraphina is trying to learn Porphorian (a language).

We need a “cosmic neuter” in English. Also, more people should ask, How may I pronoun you?” And then respect it. #currentlyreading Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman.

A photo posted by Eli (@thebooksupplier) on Jun 29, 2015 at 9:48pm PDT

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How simple and respectful would it be if we took the time to ask people how we should pronoun them, and then stick to it. John Oliver made an interesting point about how challenging it is to call people by their preferred name/pronouns, citing The Edge and Puff Daddy as examples.

Thoughts? Comments? Have you read Shadow Scale or do you want to? What are your thoughts on this gender stuff? Leave it down below and I’ll see you there soon.